While workers were preparing 600 free Thanksgiving dinners last Wednesday, the cease-and-desist letter arrived from the attorney general. A complaint said the Red Barn was posing as a nonprofit to get people to give money.

“I’m not a nonprofit, I’m a for-profit business who gives the food away, gets the money and gives that away and pays taxes on it,” Benedict said. “So, I’m not doing what they said I was doing. But without a phone call just to ensure that the letter might not need to be sent, that was basically what I was most upset about.”

She posted the letter on Facebook and received hundreds of comments, among them one from Maine’s attorney general herself.

“So, I go running up to her and I said, ‘Hi, Janet,’ and she said, ‘Laura, I’m so sorry you got that letter, and the timing is just really poor. I don’t like those form letters either,'” Benedict said.

It turns out that this run-in with the Attorney General’s Office proved to be a good thing because the owners of the restaurant got the idea to form a nonprofit called the Red Barn Cares Foundation so they could help more people and raise more money.